We are delighted to announce that Gareth Jones, Director of the Latin America and Caribbean Centre (LACC), has been awarded a grant from The British Academy under the Urban Infrastructures of Well-Being programme, in collaboration with researchers from the Brazilian research institution, Insper, and LSE Research fellow, Mara Nogueira (Department of Geography and Environment). The 24-month research project is titled, ‘Engineering food: infrastructure exclusion and ‘last mile’ delivery in Brazilian favelas’.
The project will examine an apparent paradox. Favelas are vibrant economic spaces, where ‘mom and pop’ shops (nanostores) commonly offer a variety of products. But favelas are also putative ‘food deserts’ with limited availability of affordable fresh food produce. Such shortage contributes to micronutrient deficiency, an issue directly linked with public health and wellbeing.
This limitation is linked to infrastructural exclusion, i.e. ineffective and unsustainable infrastructures that prevent supply chains from closing the ‘last mile’. Access to fresh food therefore relies on ‘people as infrastructure’, usually meaning the purchase of small quantities at high unit prices in frequent journeys.
Photo: Egg-seller in Paraisopolis favela, São Paulo city.
The project will map those formal and informal infrastructures facilitating or impairing affordability and accessibility of fresh food among favela residents in two Brazilian cities; Belo Horizonte and São Paulo. It combines logistics management and ethnographic methods, revealing everyday solutions people engineer to access food.
The aim is to identify measures to redesign supply chains to minimise gaps and inefficiencies, and to reduce inequalities in access to fresh food. The research will inform key Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), proposing innovative ways to improve physical and people infrastructures facilitating food access.
The research will be conducted in collaboration with professors Andre Duarte, Vinicius Rodrigues and Lars Meyer Sanches at Insper. The Insper team will identify, interview and survey key players across the fresh food supply chain to identify and assess strategies for last-mile delivery of fresh food to favelas. The research will involve field work accompanied by workshops in the lead up to the production of the Final Report and Policy Brief.
The LSE seeks to develop high-quality original research for the “betterment of society”. This grant and collaboration with Insper supports the development of holistic and policy relevant research.
Photo credit: Henk W J Ovink, Special Envoy for International Water Affairs, Kingdom of The Netherlands Sherpa to the UN/WB High Level Panel on Water.